These Deadly Games(18)

Or was I overthinking this?

A new message replaced the video.

Time for our next game.



What? That hardly counted as a conversation. But there was no text field where I could argue.

Instead, I cracked my knuckles, and the tips of my toes tingled with adrenaline. Whatever game they’d throw at me, I was determined to win. “Bring it on, asshole.”





CHAPTER 7





Let’s play The Great Crystal Bakeoff. Bake a batch of brownies using the recipe below. You have 30 minutes to get the batter into the oven. Ready? GO!



What the actual fuck?” I said to no one.

I had to bake brownies? Shaking my head, I tapped the link below the message, and it opened a brownie recipe on some random lifestyle blog. While Mom loved to bake, I’d never so much as turned on the oven before, so I couldn’t tell if the ingredients list was standard: all-purpose flour, unsweetened cocoa powder, white sugar, eggs, melted butter, vegetable oil, vanilla extract, salt, and chocolate chips. Seemed legit.

But why? This was so ludicrous, I almost wanted to laugh.

Yet time was ticking.

I sprinted to the kitchen. Did we even have these ingredients? Where did Mom keep things like vanilla extract? There suddenly seemed to be, like, a gazillion cabinets in here.

That was Dad’s doing. Back when he was an ad agency executive, home renovation was a hobby of his. Caelyn and I used to love helping him sand and paint, and he even let us help knock down the wall between the living and dining rooms to make it one expansive space. We took turns with the sledgehammer, pummeling the drywall with satisfying thwacks.

That was before Dad started pummeling Mom.

Once he got laid off, everything changed. He’d spent his entire career clawing his way up the corporate ladder, and then one day, he got the news—after his company’s CEO (and his mentor) suddenly passed away, new management wanted to downsize. The job he loved was gone in a flash. He transitioned to freelance work and we survived, but he’d lost his dream job and monthly NYC trips over something utterly out of his control. His nightly glass of whiskey turned into four or five, plus beer. Soon after, booze and online gambling replaced his home renovation hobby. For some reason, alcohol turned Dad into a different person—belligerent and violent. In his presence, this enormous room felt positively claustrophobic.

Now, as I puzzled over the ingredients, it felt like the cherrywood cabinets stretched infinitely—like in one of my nightmares, where the door I’m racing toward shrinks ever smaller in the distance as something terrible chases me, and my legs grow heavy, too heavy, before I startle awake.

Wait. Deep breaths. I had to take this one step at a time, just like a game with a multipart puzzle.

First, I had to preheat the oven. The dials on the fancy retro oven range might as well have controlled a spaceship. Mom tried teaching me to cook after Dad left and she took more nursing shifts, but I’d managed to botch even the most basic dishes. I’d tilt runny eggs into a plate, afraid to overcook them, or boil pasta for too long, letting the noodles get bloated and mushy. Instead, we stocked up on takeout or frozen meals. The microwave, I could handle. Baking, on the other hand, seemed like rocket science. One of the middle knobs went up to 500—that must’ve been for the oven. I dialed it to 350 and peered through the oven window. Um. I guess that worked?

Now for the ingredients. We had eggs and butter in the fridge, and fortunately, Mom was organized—all the baking supplies were in the same cabinet above the stove, even a sealed bottle of vanilla extract. I pulled out Mom’s favorite green mixing bowl and an aluminum baking tray and laid out the ingredients on the counter.

Okay. I got this.

I measured the ingredients and poured them into the bowl. Maybe the brownies were a clue. Maybe An0nym0us1 wanted me to figure out who they were. In some video games, rewards like food or health kits were sprinkled like bread crumbs toward the final boss, or a villain’s hideout. And didn’t some serial killers send clues to detectives, wanting credit for their crimes, like each murder was a trophy?

My insides tied in knots. Hopefully An0nym0us1 wasn’t a serial killer.

But who the hell would do this? I stirred it over in my mind as I mixed the batter. It had to be someone from school—someone who knew my and Dylan’s class schedules and where Mrs. Chesser kept her exams. Or did it? If they could remotely hack my phone to install that app, they might’ve been able to hack the school network to access our schedules. Before sophomore year, Zoey hacked into it to tweak our schedules so we’d have more classes together, without triggering the school’s defense system. “It’s not like I’m changing our grades or anything,” she justified. “It’s totally harmless.” So it was possible.

And technically someone could’ve broken into school one night or weekend, gone into Dylan’s classrooms, and searched for something worth stealing. Something that would get Dylan in trouble. Without any vandalism or stolen computers to raise any red flags, the security guards might not have noticed a break-in.

So it didn’t necessarily have to be someone in our school.

The thermostat light on the oven turned on as it reached the right temperature. I’d mixed the batter enough, right? It’s not like I cared about quality here. How would An0nym0us1 judge the brownies? Would they come over and take a bite? This made absolutely no sense.